Tag Archives: Serendipity

A knock at the door…on Christmas Eve

14 Sunday Dec 2014

Posted by in Events, Seasons, Small town life

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US 51 bypassed Minonk many years before we moved there, so not many travelers stopped at the church for assistance, and fewer came to the parsonage, which was a nondescript ranch-style house several blocks south of the church. That may explain why I chose the meditation topic for Christmas Eve 1986 without a second thought—finding room for strangers. The town had not had much practice with that theme, though the rough area economy, and the deteriorating and vacant housing in the rural community were preparing the ground for some changes. I preached it, a safe distance away from Bethlehem two thousand years ago. The late candlelight communion service was beautiful, of course. Families packed the pews and shared customary greetings at the benediction.

After the lights were out and the church doors locked, on that cold icy night, we drove home with our  teenage children and prepared for bed, when the knock came at the door. I pulled my pants over my pajama bottoms, and went to answer, with some trepidation. There stood a man in dirty, disheveled clothing, with a canvas bag slung over his shoulder, asking if I could help him find a room for the night. He introduced himself as Goodman.

“Well, Mr. Goodman,” I answered without much enthusiasm, “You’ve come to the right place. I don’t know how you found me, and I can’t promise much, but we’ll find you a room.” I invited him inside, thinking of all those times I remembered when such an invitation did not turn out well. We had a sleeper sofa. The nearest motel was fifteen miles away. As Jan gave him something to drink and eat,  I called that motel and found that they still had a room available for the night. At Midnight I found myself driving Mr. Goodman south to El Paso, listening to a hard-luck story, and trying to encourage a man to hold onto hope that things would get better for him.  And wondering about the mysterious ways….

That was the only night that we had such a visitor knock on our door seeking shelter, in the eight years we lived at Minonk, and it was on Christmas Eve, when I preached about welcoming strangers.

a Christmas angel…named Debbie

14 Sunday Dec 2014

Posted by in Caring, People, Seasons

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Once in a while on vacation we see something that reminds us of people back home, and if it would make a nice gift and we can afford it we buy it for them. This was the case when we saw the pottery angel oil lamps, about 250 of them, arranged layer by layer in a Christmas tree-shaped display at Otis Zark’s (O.Zark, get it?) down in Arkansas. Our friend Debbie collects angels. Not only that, she has frequently been an angel, and quite generous with us, so Jan and I said to each other, “Let’s get one of those for Debbie. She needs another angel.” (Need is relative, isn’t it? Probably Debbie has enough angels to supply all of us, but this was, well, a different kind.)

So we examined the angels for the prettiest and the sweetest looking one to match our friend. We narrowed it down to five, then made our decision, picked it up, bought it, put it in an official O. Zark box, and carried it home. Later we passed it on to our friend Debbie, who was suitably appreciative. Only later did we learn a bit more about the gift.

Debbie took the boxed angel home, of course. She read on the box how each angel had a different name, and you could find the name of your angel inscribed on the back of its neck. She found the name of her angel. It was “Debbie.”

Debbie mentioned to us when we next saw her that she appreciated the “fact” that we had searched for an angel that had her name. But we didn’t, we said. We only looked for the prettiest and sweetest one that we could find. “You mean you didn’t know that the angel you gave me was named Debbie?”

No, we didn’t know. But obviously someone did. Someone does keep track of such things. Not me. And this time it wasn’t Jan either.

Glory in the lowest!

07 Sunday Dec 2014

Posted by in Nature, Seasons

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Here in the last days of calendar autumn I look out at the oak trees and still wonder at the remaining colors.  Hidden all season by vibrant greens were these yellows, oranges and reds, as well as the base of rich and varied browns. (You remember my claim that these are the true colors of Christmas, made holy in manger and straw and animal skin.)

But this is a bright sunny day of redheads. First arrived the little Downy woodpecker and its mate, with their black and white barred coats, then the large outrageous Pileated woodpecker came, looking like the remnant of an ancient race. Then came the regulation “Northern” woodpecker, its mate wearing a rather plain tan coat except for that fierce black triangular breastplate. They all work with amazing determination and skill, flying straight down, straight up, perching upside down, beating their heads against the grain, finding all those tiny moving morsels, ugly to me but appetizing to them. The redheads of course include the cardinals and the tanager, whose mate still wears a luminous green coat, which I would have thought she would have shed for a less noticeable one in these woods.

I wonder what the redheads would do with that red and yellow centipede I found yesterday. A mean looking creature, four inches long, scurrying with uncountable legs, with biting pinchers and stingers that intimidated me. A too close encounter would send any sensible person to the Emergency Room. Would they have digested it, enough for several meals, or would they have left it well enough alone? More friendly encounters occur with the humble walking sticks, affixed to anything stable, enjoying the last warm autumn hours.  At six to nine inches long, some of them look like walking branches, large enough for the birds to perch on.

With all these decorated creatures hanging around, I am transported to the scene last night, when the curtains of clouds suddenly revealed themselves as no clouds at all in the northern night sky. They were lights, Northern Lights, shimmering in that rare dance of sunspot rays that fills the northern sky, first with white light, that I mistook for clouds, then gradually revealing all the colors of the rainbow. They shimmered and danced in splendor.

And we think that we will decorate for Christmas? Who can match the extraordinary display that is already in place for us to see?  Glory to the Son! Glory in the Highest! And the lowest.

The light shines in the darkness

06 Saturday Dec 2014

Posted by in Farm, Growing up

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The farm where I grew up was 320 acres, a half-section. That meant that the “back sixty” field lay a mile south of the farmhouse and buildings. My jobs as a youth included the best jobs in driving the tractor—disking, harrowing, windrowing hay and straw, pulling the wagons back and forth. Those jobs didn’t involve a lot of skill, but there was pleasure in getting them done. Then I was often by myself, when Dad had other work to do, and now I find myself in memory, in the back sixty as the darkness of night approaches.

In those years “pole lights,” as we called them, were turned on by hand. Ours was a large incandescent bulb, maybe 250 watts, hanging about thirty feet up one leg of a tall windmill. Large sodium vapor lamps, and other automatic all-night lamps, had not yet brought to the countryside a crowd of bright lights to overwhelm the exquisite starscape of night.

Looking over the fields, no other pole lights would usually appear. The lights of distant neighbors would be blocked by the woods that grew along the river that wound through the area. When the time came for me to quit, when I had not finished before dark, the pole light would provide my cue. The planets and stars would begin to show up in the sky, and that one pole light would shine from my home. It would signal the end of work, the supper table nearly ready, and the time to turn toward home.

In the darkness, from a mile away one small light served as a beacon. For the next twenty minutes, riding the Farmall H or the John Deere A, following the farm lane north across the prairie, crossing the river bridge, opening and closing the gates that enclosed the cattle, the light beckoned—warm, inviting, reassuring, promising comfort, hunger satisfied, thirst quenched, and rest.

How do we say “thank you?”

28 Friday Nov 2014

Posted by in Caring, Events, Seasons, Words

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Todah, wado, efxaristo, danke, gracias, thank you, xie xie, salamat, grazie, mahalo, domo arigato, obrigado, spasiba, asante, cam on, medasi, gahm-sah-hahm-ni-da, dhanyavad…all ways to say the same thing among many more peoples and languages.

Usually these words call for an appropriate response. “You’re welcome” used to be the polite response in English. These days we hear an echoing “thank you” often, as if the “first giver” knows that the gift is being passed along in an endless series, popularized in the phrase “pay it forward,” in contrast to “pay it back.” The giver is not only glad to give; he or she finds reward in moving gifts along an endless sequence of giving.

Mrs. Veatch made that point to me in 1973, when she called our home in Iroquois, Illinois, from her home in Thawville and asked if she could come to visit. She had been my high school Latin teacher, but she instilled much more than Latin in all of her students. Latin was her base for sharing the love of learning and people. Her home was a library that became the start of a library for the village of Thawville and a resource for all of the area. She knew that my wife had just given birth to our second child, and with part-time work and graduate school almost finished we didn’t have much. She came bearing gifts.

“Don’t even think about repaying me,” she said. “I’ve already had my reward from seeing your accomplishments as my student. Just pass it on.” That was her consistent attitude, even as she faced the death of three sons in those years, and even as she faced her own illness and death. I have remembered her example as our opportunities to share with others became greater as the years have passed.

“Bitte” is a frequent response in German, “I beg” in English, which seems an odd idiom until we realize that the obligation to give is felt acutely in one who knows how much is owed to the others who have made giving possible.

the day the combine burned up

25 Tuesday Nov 2014

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I don’t know most of the details of this story. How much did the combine cost? A lot. What crop was Dad combining? Corn or beans. What field was he combining? The north sixty acres, that we called the Pacey place. What date, or time of day?  Who knows?  Daylight, in the fall,  when Dad was more than 75 years old. Someone may remember or have a record. What caused the fire? Could have been several different things. Dad had a fire extinguisher. I don’t know whether he tried to use it and finally had to give up. No matter. The big expensive John Deere combine burned up. Dad got off of it before he became a casualty. That was the most important part of the story, of course.

The other important thing about it was what Dad said afterward, “It was getting harder for me to climb up the ladder to the cab anyway.” Such equanimity. Such acceptance. Not just resignation to a fate that couldn’t be changed. He expressed some relief, a bright side, a positive outcome. I think he was actually grateful. After that he could hire someone else to do that job. He didn’t have to use that monster machine anymore, just because he had paid for it, invested in it, and needed to use it for the harvest. As much as he loved farming, some aspects of it had become a burden for a man who had started to farm shortly after he learned to walk. Good riddance to operating a combine, maintaining it, fixing it, climbing up and down on it.

There is not a bright side to everything. Often we are surprised to find it in an unexpected place, but there it is. Sometimes we can even say appropriately, “Burn, baby, burn!”

blowing in the wind

15 Saturday Nov 2014

Posted by in Events, Running

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The day was very windy and I was running one of my favorite routes, three miles around the lake and up the creek. I enjoy the woods and trails, the limestone cliffs, rock shelters and caves, and the historic ford where ages ago the Cherokee detachments crossed on their way west, and before them, the Choctaw, the Seneca, the Peoria, the Lenape, way back to the Osage and the Caddo and who knows who else. Each of those peoples probably lived in this rich and pleasant valley longer than I ever will.

As I ran, huffing and puffing, I saw two women straining against the wind, at different points along the path, each woman with two leashes, one for each hand, extending straight and taut to a large dog. Two women, each attached to two large dogs. They looked to me like the dogs were serving as anchors, keeping each woman from blowing away in the fifty miles per hour wind gusts.

So, when I approached the first woman, I was about to speak my observation about the dogs being anchors, but she, seeing that I was about to speak, gave me one of those frowny looks, that said, “Don’t talk to me! I’m not in the mood!” So, I said, “Hi,” and went on.

I was approaching the second woman and her dogs, and she smiled, so I said, “Dogs make good anchors in this wind!” There’s not a whole lot of time to talk when you are running with a fifty miles per hour wind at your back. And she said back, “They’re taking me for a walk. I’m not taking them.”

Conversations between runners and walkers don’t follow a linear logic. I just took note that her observation made more sense to her than mine did. The leashes were taut because the dogs were pulling hard against the wind, pulling her along. She did not see herself as being anchored by the dogs so she would not blow away. Not that my observation was entirely wrong. It just didn’t match her interpretation. Perhaps we were both right. It was simply a matter of perspective.

When I was running against the wind, I would have been glad for anchors that I could count on, pushing ahead of me. Perhaps they were there. I just did not see them.

the coconut cuckoo

11 Tuesday Nov 2014

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A dear friend went to an art league benefit, which is a customary event for her. She is an aficionado of the arts, unlike me, a hopeless dilettante. There she was, surrounded by other sponsors and patrons, with an array of specially prepared foods, friendly conversations, and even some donated artworks that would be distributed among the attendees as rewards for being generous.

One work of “art” caught her attention—a coconut dressed in colorful feathers and painted to resemble some exotic bird, suspended from the ceiling. She examined it, and keeping her thoughts to herself, wondered what in the world she would do with something like that? At the same moment she heard her name being called as the recipient of a prize, the prize being the very same bird that she was looking at. The next thought followed in due course—who in the world could she give it to?

You have probably heard it said, as I have, be careful what you wish for, or what you pray for, because you might get it. Vice versa, it appears it can be said just as appropriately, be careful what you do not want, or do not pray for, because that is what you just might get.

A little ghost story

29 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by in Death, Events

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Twenty-four years ago we bid farewell to Jan’s father Lyle Kleinlein after a year long illness with advanced colon cancer. We were there when he died, and I got to say to him, “Go on ahead, Lyle; we will come soon to join you,” at which he relaxed and stopped struggling to breathe. He had asked me to officiate at his funeral, preaching on forgiveness (which is the only reason our family had been able to come together), while his step-son, Edsel, also a minister, would speak about his practical joking and impish sense of humor. The funeral went well on a perfect May morning. Hours afterward Nathan and I left Jan at Mt. Sterling. We drove home, and I realized that the watch that Lyle had given me years before was missing. I had taken it off as I drove and put it in the car’s ash tray. It was not there. Nathan helped me search the car and the things I had already taken into the house, but it was nowhere to be found. We gave up and, hungry, went to the refrigerator. There the watch sat where neither of us had put it.

The new phone number

19 Sunday Oct 2014

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When my daughter was preparing for the move to their new home several years ago, with a new telephone exchange, she thought she would attempt to secure a number that corresponded to their name just as so many corporations have numbers that are easy to remember because of that kind of name connection. The telephone company representative abruptly said that was not possible— “this is your number, take it or leave it.” My daughter was ready to complain to this rude service representative until she noted that the new number spelled “GOD- 1.” Suddenly it seemed quite acceptable after all.